


One Cold November

by rvdhoodlum



Series: yj fic exchange 2018 [1]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Past Artemis Crock/Zatanna Zatara, Past Snaibsel, Zatanna centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 02:08:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15160076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rvdhoodlum/pseuds/rvdhoodlum
Summary: Zatanna’s life has been… a lot lately. Her dad’s been possessed by Doctor Fate for 5 years and counting; she’s bi and out, but still facing inner turmoil; one of her best friends just died saving the world; and lately, she feels like she’s losing her grip on her magical abilities. Everything’s falling apart, until she discovers that Wally’s death might be much bigger than just that - it might be the key to getting her father back, and maybe even saving the world (again).





	One Cold November

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for the yj mini bang, run by @yjficexchange over on tumblr (thank you so much!!) 
> 
> [art](http://tye-does-the-art-thing.tumblr.com/post/175541492269/my-contribution-for-the-yj-mini-bang-20-a-scene) accompanying the fic was done by @tye-does-the-art-thing on tumblr (its fantastic PLEASE check it out im still crying over how bless i am)

_It was cold. No, cold doesn’t quite do the feeling justice. It was icy. It was the type of cold that started in her bones and seeped through the rest of her body. It was a cold that turned her blood into frigid rivers and rendered her body immobile._

_It was also dark, though dark in much the same way that it was cold. It was like existing in the void, until a shadow happened to float past her vision, and she tried to grab it, but it turned out that the shadow was nothing after all._

_It wasn’t quiet. There were murmurs all around her, though she couldn’t decipher any of their meanings. But in the background there was a ceaseless ringing, a ringing that intensified with every second she continued to exist in this plane._

_Beeeeeeeeeeep_

_Suddenly, a flash of light cut through the murky haze of shadows. It was an arm, reaching towards her, and she grabbed it. The arm emerged from the shadows, and with it, the full body of a certain speedster._

_“Wally?”_

_The figure didn’t respond but kept moving forward, and dimly she registered that they were both on the move, running much faster than humanly possible._

_“Wally! Talk to me!”_

_The figure turned it’s head to her. Everything about it appeared to belong to Wally West, but it’s eyes were full of electricity and power. There was no soul in this body._

_She lifted her other hand to touch the figure’s face, but when her fingers met skin she felt him being pulled from her. The figure that wasn’t quite Wally opened its mouth in apparent shock and pain._

_“Please! Help him!”_

_Beeeeeeeeeeep_

_The ringing intensified, followed by a blinding flash of light, and suddenly she found herself in a dome-like space, with two oval shaped windows at the reer that spilled electric-blue light into the dome. She floated over to them, peering through._

_The first window contains a single hospital bed with Wally in it, his whole body seeming to flicker in and out of being. The second has a similar set up, with an older man in the bed. Both machines were beeping urgently._

_“Dad?”_

_Beeeeeeeeeeep_

_“Dad!”_

_Beeeeeeeeeeep_

_The ringing became almost deafening, as though someone had hit the dome with a gong. She went back to the window, only to find that both beds were empty, the machines still beeping to alert someone of the issue._

_Beeeeeeeeeeep_

_“NO!”_

_It was as though someone had opened a hole in her soul, and all the iciness that had been contained in her body filled into her soul too, until there was nothing left but the frozen husk of a former person. And then, as though enough hadn’t already been taken from her, the floor beneath her feet opened and swallowed her whole._

_Beeeeeeeeeeep_

“Aaah!” Zatanna shot straight up in bed, the half-formed words for spells already resting heavy on the tip of her tongue.

_Beeeeeeeeeeep Beeeeeeeeeeep Beeeeeeeeeeep_

The sound rang on, making her head pound. She slammed her hand down on the offending source of the sound - her alarm clock - once, then again, then _again_ , anything to make the noise _stop_.

It did, but the ringing in her skull didn’t. Sighing, Zatanna sat up, sweating despite the fact that it was November and she was wearing a tank top. Eyes half closed, head down, and body hunched, she dragged herself out the door and turned into the small bathroom.

She splashed water on her face, making eye contact with herself in the mirror. _Honestly_ , she thought, _I’m a mess_.

Water dripped down her face, parts of which were starting to break out due to lack of care. Her hair stuck out in all directions - she tried to remember the last time she washed it, couldn’t, and guessed it was around a week ago - and her arm was scratched raw and bleeding slightly, a result of the nightmares.

Eager to get out of her pajamas, Zatanna got in the shower and turned the water on cold. For a blissful moment, the icy water seemed to seep under her skin and she felt awake and free and _alive_ , but the high didn’t last, and all at once she was just a girl in a cold shower wishing that it were warmer. She twisted the knob, but the temperature remained the same.

“Toh retaw!”

Nothing.

“Toh _retaw_!”

If anything, the shower felt colder.

“Fine!” Zatanna said to no one, and turned the water as cold as it would go for the rest of the shower.

The cold water made her skin feel tight like icy armor, but after a shower, breakfast, and a change of clothes, Zatanna had to admit that she felt better than she has in days. Good enough to get back to work, even.

“Taolf nwod eht xob,” she commanded, looking sharply at the top of her kitchen cabinets. The box did as it was told, though it floated down shakily and a few papers fell onto the floor before the box settled there itself. Sighing, Zatanna left her seat and sat down on the floor next to it.

The fallen file was labeled _The Legend of Fate_. Zatanna slid it aside, rifling deeper through the box. Three large folders, white paint, newspaper clippings rubber banded together, an old fashioned wand, a ball of twine, candles, and a mini replica of the Helmet of Fate all found themselves displaced. Zatanna flipped through a photo album, scrutinizing the black and white photographs as if she was an interrogator and if she glared harshly enough they’d reveal their secrets.

She was just losing herself in a photo of a beautiful woman gardening when her phone made a _ding_ from the table.

_Alerts: date @10:30_

She looked at the clock. _10:14_.

“Shit,” Zatanna hissed, stuffing everything back in the box. This time, she dragged a chair over and stood on the tips of her toes to return the box to its home on top of the cabinet.

She grabbed keys, wallet, phone, and a hair tie and was out the door in thirty seconds flat, not pacing herself down the twelve flights of stairs she needed to cover.

“Ixat!” she shouted, and maybe the magic was finally working, or maybe she just got lucky, but a taxi rounded the corner and Zatanna hopped in it and was on her way.

She made it to the coffee shop only four minutes late, which was perfectly acceptable if she wanted to seem like she cared, but not _too_ much.

A bell rang as she pushed open the door, and Zatanna saw a girl in the corner booth wave at her. She was wearing the cute, oversized sweater with a rainbow on it from her profile picture, and had two coffees already on the table.

Smiling back, Zatanna made her way over the booth and slid in. “Hey. Sorry I’m late.”

“No biggie!” The girl - Jess, she remembered - slid her one of the coffees and smiled again. Jess had a cute dimple on her left cheek that she recognized from her dating profile pictures, and it filled Zatanna with some kind of inexplicable joy. “I got you a coffee, regular with cream and a half a sugar.”

Zatanna’s eyebrows raised slightly. “You know how I like my coffee?”

“Our first conversation. ‘Sweet, but not too sweet.’ Unless you’re in the mood for iced coffee, then all bets are off.”

“You got that right.” Zatanna chuckled, remembering the first time that Jess had messaged her.

The two sat in silence for a moment, drinking their coffees and regarding each other. Zatanna couldn’t stop staring at the spot where the dimple had been.

“’Scuse me a sec,” Jess said, and flipped her head upside down, then up again, making her hair fly upwards in an arc and twisting it up in a messy bun of top of her head. One string of hair in the front remained untethered and framed itself around the left side of her face.

“So…” said Jess.

“So.”

“Um… how are you?”

“I’ve been better.” Zatanna took a sip of her coffee.

“Oh?” Jess raised an eyebrow. “Do tell.”

“Well…” Well indeed. What could she say? “Um, it’s a work thing, I guess.”

“Ah,” Jess said, nodding knowingly. “Long hours?”

“Yeah,” said Zatanna, relieved for an out. “Yeah, that.”

“I know the feeling. Bosses can be a real pain in the ass.”

There was another lull in the conversation, and both girls took sips from their coffees. Jess opened her mouth as if to restart the conversation, when Zatanna’s phone buzzed.

She looked down at it. _Alert: Team mission. Report to Watchtower._

“Oh,” Zatanna said, and Jess’ face fell.

“You have to go?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me guess, work?”

Zatanna smiled ruefully. “The one and only. Jess, I’m really sorry about this. Text me later and we’ll reschedule?”

“Sure,” said Jess, in a way that made Zatanna think this was the last she’d ever hear from her. “Don’t let them work you too hard.”

“I’ll try,” Zatanna replied, and she grabbed her coffee and left.

_Well,_ that _was a disaster_ , Zatanna thought to herself, keeping her head down so as few people as possible would see the heat rising in her cheeks. _I haven’t had a date that awkward since… it’s been a while._

She preferred not to linger in those thoughts, the ones drenched in self-doubt. Zatanna walked to the nearest Zeta tube as quickly as she possibly could, and vanished into space.

***

_Recognized: Zatanna - A03_

The Zeta tube whirred and powered down as Zatanna stepped out of the light and into the Watchtower. Her boot steps echoed eerily around the metal dome.

“Hello?”

No response. Odd. Zatanna checked her phone again, which had definitely alerted her that she was needed here, and yet, the space station seemed devoid of life.

She wasn’t quite sure that she wanted to be moving at all, but she found herself wandering towards the garden, boots clacking on the cool metal floors. She didn’t go here much.

If she were in the mood to be honest with herself, she didn’t go here at all. Zatanna didn’t like graves. She was well aware that she have a habit of looking backwards, living in the past, even, but she wasn’t one to memorialize. Once _it_ was set in stone, or a plaque below a hologram, whatever - _it_ became simply _death_. That was just too solid and unchangeable.

If she were being honest, Zatanna lived with one foot in the past because she _had_ to believe time wasn’t some permanent structure etched into some grand universal design, that the problems she hadn’t been able to fix weren’t predestined. The past could be the key to a better future, if only she could figure out how to unlock it.

If Zatanna were in the mood to be honest, she’d probably spill her entire goddamn aching heart in the middle of all those memorials. She was almost there now; the light from a fallen hero’s image shined through the top of the tree directly in front of her.

If Zatanna were being honest, she’d be bawling her eyes out in the middle of that graveyard, but her steps were short and sluggish and suddenly not the only source of noise.

_Recognized: Kid Flash - B23_

Taking advantage of the convenient excuse, she turned around to meet him. The speedster could have easily run to find her, but for whatever reason he stayed put, and for that she was grateful.

“Where is everyone?” Zatanna asked as Bart came into view in front of the Zeta tubes, dressed in his Impulse gear instead of the Kid Flash suit.

Bart shuffled his feet and tapped two fingers rapidly against his side. “Um, nobody else is coming.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “So, _you_ called me, on a secure Team link.”

“Sorry.” The tapping intensified. “I know I shouldn’t have, but I really need your help.”

Zatanna should have been frustrated, even angry, with Bart for interrupting her date, but all she could feel was chilled, from the inside out. “It’s fine. I know you wouldn't call if it weren’t important. Are you ok?”

The tapping had intensified to the point where Zatanna was pretty sure Bart was going to burn a hole through his super suit if he didn’t calm down. He inhaled deeply, exhaled, and made deliberate eye contact.

“I need you to come to the North Pole with me and perform a spell.”

Zatanna felt an unexpected wave of panicked heat rush over her. “You what?”

“I know, I _know_ it sounds crazy. And everyone’s been trying to get me to move on, but something about what Jaime said wasn’t _right_. You weren’t there, but when Wally… vanished at the North Pole-” His breath hitched and he paused. “I talked to Jaime about it afterwards, and apparently the Scarab said, he _said_ that Wally was going to ‘cease.’ Cease, not die, but cease, in _this_ plane of existence. So, what if he went to mine?”

“Yours… as in the future?”

“Yes!” For the first time in their conversation, Zatanna heard something other than fear in Bart’s voice. “Look, I’m a time traveler, and I know how this works. The energies needed are very similar, and we probably generated enough power to send him through time. I _just_ need you to perform a spell find out if there’s any remnants of time travel where he vanished.”

He scanned her face for any signs of agreement, or acknowledgement, but seeming to find nothing, he continued to talk. “I _know_ Zee, I sound like a lunatic, and maybe they’re right. But I just thought, I don’t know, maybe you’d be the one to understand becauseofyourpastandyourdadandstuffsorry.”

The sheer speed of that last sentence seemed to snap Zatanna back into her body. And, God, this was the _last_ thing she wanted to be doing right now, but Bart was practically vibrating a hole through the Watchtower floor and she melted.

“It’s fine, Bart. I understand, and I’ll help you.” _I don’t think you’re right,_ was left unsaid. “I’ve heard crazier theories, and I’ve _had_ crazier theories,” she went for instead, hoping to lighten the mood. “It’s worth a shot, right?” _I just_ hope _you’re right._

“Cool, cool cool cool, thank you so so _so_ much.” For a second Bart looked like he wanted to hug Zatanna with one of his trademark death-squeeze-hugs, but he managed to restrain himself. Instead, he visibly calmed down, and reverted back to tapping his side more slowly than before. “So, um, there’s no Zeta directly to the North Pole… Do you wanna take a ship or would you be comfortable with me carrying you?”

“Can you lift me?” He nodded. “Then I’m comfortable with that. I’m pretty sure you don’t want a record of us taking a ship anyway.”

He smiled gratefully and tilted his head towards the Zeta tubes. “Then let’s go.”

The two of them walked through the Zeta tubes, and when they emerged on Earth again, Bart scooped Zatanna up in his arms like she weighed far less that she did and they were off. Despite everything, Zatanna couldn’t help but enjoy herself just a little bit. She hadn’t felt speed like this since, well, since she’d been on the Team on a mission where Wally had needed to run with her. The gravity of the situation somehow felt like nothing when they were going at exhilarating speeds and defying all other laws of physics anyway.

Sadly, the journey was over all too soon, as tended to be the case when one was traveling faster than the speed of sound. It also tended to be the case that the high winds could become dangerously cold, but Zatanna felt as though it was nothing compared to the whistling winds of the North Pole, which made her skin crawl like the air outside was somehow able to make its way inside her body.

Bart gently let her down, and the snow crunched under her feet. Behind them, she could see chunks of ice, and felt herself shiver even more imagining the pain that would befall them if the ground were to collapse.

Bart had started vibrating nervously again, leading Zatanna to the site where _it_ happened, and looking back every few seconds like he expected someone else to take charge and free him of this burden. They got closer, closer, when suddenly Bart stopped dead in his tracks.

“Bart?” Zatanna’s teeth chattered and her hand shook as she reached for him. “Bart.”

Zatanna touched his shoulder and he lept into the air. A wave of panic filled her lungs - the ice! If Bart fell through the ice he couldn’t breathe! - but he landed, safe and sound, momentarily clinging to her arm like an anchor before embarrassedly steadying himself and letting go.

“Sorry,” he whispered, voice so faint she could barely separate it from the wind. “It’s just…”

“Don’t be sorry. Let’s just keep moving.”

The two continued forward, every step of the distance they had left to go a battle. They exchanged neither words nor looks, but when Zatanna felt Bart tentatively brush his hand against hers, she took it gladly and with understanding.

They walked forward against the wind and ice for what felt like eternity, yet all of a sudden they were there.

“This is the place,” Bart said, and Zatanna nodded grimly. She hadn’t been there when it happened, hadn’t even performed any spells yet, but she could tell by the aura of this place. This was where the Team had lost everything to save the world.

“You might want to stand back,” Zatanna warned. “Some spells can get a little intense, and I’ve never performed this one before. _If_ it works, we should see a change in the atmosphere, a sort of visible residual energy.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Bart with a smile that didn’t translate into his voice. “I’ve traveled through time, remember? I can handle it.”

“Ok.” She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and frantically tried to conjure up the words to a new spell in the backwards language. For a moment, her mind went entirely blank and she felt another wave of panic threaten to crash over her, and then the words popped in her brain like it had taken no effort.

_It_ should _have taken no effort,_ she thought, but she pushed those thoughts aside and said, “Here we go.”

“Wohs em emit levart ereh! Laever eht ygrene!” Zatanna chanted.

At first it seemed as though nothing was happening. Even if the spell revealed no evidence of time travel, there should be _some_ reaction in response to her commands.

Zatanna clenched her free hand into a fist and tried again. “Laever eht ygrene! Wohs em! _Wohs em_!”

Zatanna continued to chant, and the air around them seem to crackle with electricity. A strand of blue lightning appeared briefly to Bart’s right and he gasped, but it had vanished in the time it took him to make the sound. As her words grew fiercer and faster, so did the wind around them. The blue strands were beginning to appear all over the air, snaking around them like a river.

Zatanna chanted the words to a spell far beyond her level that she had just made up until her throat hurt from the cold, and _then_. She felt a sensation she had hoped for but not exactly expected to feel. The spell was _working_.

She felt her consciousness drift upwards into a void-like space, and saw a ball composed of blue strands of energy in her mind’s eye. She could _feel_ it calling towards her, and willed her spirit to float closer. Just a little further, she could make it, she could _do it_ -

She felt a squeeze on her hand, pulling her back to earth and grounding her firmly on the frozen ground. The energy that had been building in the air fizzled and then - _pop_! It was gone.

“No no no nonononono! This was supposed to work!” Bart cried out. “Zatanna, you were so _close_. We _have_ to try again.”

“ _No!_ ” She jerked her hand out of Bart’s grasp like he had burned her. “What did you _do_?”

“What did I - Zatanna, we were so close! I could see blue stuff all in the air. That means I was right!”

“What it _means_ is nothing. I couldn’t finish the spell because _you_ distracted me,” she said icily.

“By holding hands? I’m so sorry! If that was an issue, we can try again without-”

Zatanna felt a ball of ice growing in her stomach. “No, you know what, I’m sorry. You couldn’t have known that would distract me. But that doesn’t change the fact that you were right.”

“Yeah?” said Bart, confused. “Is that a bad thing?”

“You weren’t right about the time travel, Bart,” she sighed. “You were right that this spell was supposed to _work_.” _And it didn’t_.

“And it didn’t,” he filled in for her. “But we can fix this together!”

“No, _we_ can’t,” Zatanna said. The pit in her stomach grew even larger. They couldn’t fix it together, because Bart couldn’t do magic. No, that was on her, and distractions or not, she just didn’t have the magicians chops to pull off the greatest trick of all: bringing someone back from the dead.

“You think this is some easy thing, some fucking problem that we can just solve!” She regretted the words the second they left her mouth, but the pit in her stomach consumed her and everything just came tumbling out. “Right here, right now, and it’s resolved by magic! But that’s not how things work.”

Bart gaped at her, wounded. “Zatanna, I thought-”

“See, though, that’s the thing. You _didn’t_ think. But if you stopped to let rational thought into this for one _second_ -”

“ _Zatanna_!” Bart let out a guttural shriek.

“Then you’d _know_!” she raised her voice over his, bordering shrill. “Life isn’t a fairy tale, Bart. People leave you, and they don’t come back just because you have _hope_ that they will. That’s not a fight anyone can win.”

Bart stood in front of her, quivering as the snow dotted his head. He looked prepared to flee at any second - that, or break down and never get up - but some invisible force had him rooted in place.

“ _Zee_ ,” he begged.

Zatanna closed her eyes. “Search all you want, throw years of your life away looking for an impossible loophole to cheat death; it won’t change a thing. You have to live with this, Bart. The spell failed, and you were wrong.”

Bart’s lips moved in the shape of her name, but Zatanna didn’t hear him. “Wally’s dead.”

Whatever unspoken spell had been keeping Bart in this frozen wasteland broke. He sprinted away, leaving Zatanna alone to the wind and the cold that she couldn’t seem to shake.

***

_It was cold. There was no real sense of physical being here, but it was cold nonetheless, and she could feel it._

_“He_ _lp!” she heard distantly. “Please!”_

_She felt herself drifting towards the noise._

_“Help me!” Another voice this time, from behind._

_Conflicted, she moved towards the second sound, only for a third voice to appear._

_“Please!”_

_A fourth, a fifth, a sixth._

_“How could you!”_

_“Don’t abandon me!”_

_“I trusted you!”_

_She felt herself being pulled in all directions, torn apart from the outside in. Desperately, she tried to cast a spell, but the sound was trapped within her._

_It was windy, where she was. It was cold. That was the worst part._

Zatanna woke up in a panic and tipped out of a folding chair and crashed to the floor.

“ _Shit_ ,” she hissed.

She reached blindly to her right, fumbling for her phone that she usually charged on the floor at night, but found only cold concrete.

_What the - oh. Right. The cold. Bart. The North Pole. Taking ten minutes to perform a simple teleportation spell. The storage locker. The cold. Right._ Zatanna stood up, looking around the locker where she’d spent the night. Or - she reconsidered, finding her phone in her pocket - the night and the very early morning.

Zatanna stooped down and picked up the chair, turning on the lamp on the floor so that she wouldn’t knock anything else over. She picked up her phone, scrolling up and down the list of contacts. She wasn’t quite sure what she would say if she called someone, only that if she _didn’t_ call anyone she would explode from all the feelings inside her.

_Call Dick? No, he’s got enough going on right now. Call Bart and apologize? No. It’s all… too raw right now. He doesn’t deserve that. Wally? He’d know what to do, how to talk to Bart._

She clicked on the contact and was about to hit the call button when it hit her.

_Oh. Right._

If she were being honest, the only other person Zatanna wanted to talk to was her dad. With misty eyes, she scrolled up the list to “A+ Parent” and hovered her finger over the contact. Sometimes she would do this; not often, but some nights when she got low, she would call her dad’s voicemail just to hear his voice. This was one of those nights.

Zatanna clicked, and found herself staring down Artemis’s contact.

This… wasn’t who she intended to call, but Artemis really was the perfect choice. Supportive, brutally honest, knew Zatanna very well, knew Bart decently well, willing to pick up a call this late, alive.

Before she could back out, Zatanna hit the call button and let the phone ring.

_Brrrrrrriinggg..._

_...Brrrrrrriinggg..._

_...Brrrrrrriinggg..._

_...Brrrrrrriinggg..._

_She’s not going to pick up_ , thought Zatanna when -

_\- click_

“Hello?” The voice came scratchy and muffled through the phone.

“Hey! So, you’re asleep, and _this_ was a mistake. God, sorry, I shouldn’t have called-”

“Woah, woah, slow the hell down. What’s up?”

“Nothing I can’t deal with on my own. Or in the _morning_.”

“Is this about Bart?”

Zatanna’s stomach dropped. “He told you?” came the question, barely a whisper.

“Yeah. We’ve been in contact more since Wally. But don’t hang up, Zee. I know you didn’t mean it.”

“I didn’t, but I said it anyway. That’s the worst part.”

“Don’t panic. You can apologize later; just explain why you said it and try to make up for it.”

“But _I_ don’t know why I said it!”

“Were you angry?”

“Of course I wasn’t angry at Bart. He did nothing wrong.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“... _Oh_. Oh, s _hit_.”

“Yeah.” Zatanna swore that, despite the heaviness of the conversation, she could hear the smirk in Artemis’s voice that always made itself known when she was right and she knew it.

“Zee, why are you mad at yourself?”

Zatanna paused. “It’s a lot of things, I think,” she began, slowly and with plenty of space between each word. “It started with Wally. I also just had an extraordinarily awkward date - which, ok, not the worst thing in the world - but it was with a girl. And it brought back all sorts of internalized issues that I thought I left behind. You know, the whole I’m-kidding-myself-it’s-just-a-phase thing. Bad time.”

“You’re so valid and I love you,” Artemis interjected lightheartedly, which did the trick, because Zatanna laughed.

“Thanks, Art. It’s kind of more than that, though. I mean, it’s November.”

As as quickly as it came, the lightened mood was gone, replaced by chilly silence.

“It’s November,” Artemis echoed.

“It’s November,” Zatanna concurred, “but it’s worse than it’s been before, including the first year when my dad was gone. Because -” she took a breath, “- because I’m losing my grip of on the language of the magic.

“It’s worse than the first time, because when he was gone then, at least I had a family to lean on. The team took me in, so, in a way, it was the best of the Novembers. I tried to disappear into myself and my denial-fueled research, and you guys were there to pull me out of it.” Zatanna spoke rapidly now, like if she didn’t release the words trapped inside her now she’d be stuck in that cold silence forever.

“But now -” she was near tears now, she could feel it, but she _had_ to keep going, “- now it’s so much worse because I’m-I’m all alone and I feel like I’m going crazy. It’s been six years and I never b-believed that my father would be trapped in Fate forever. I _always_ had h-hope that there was another way. But now? I can’t see an-another solution, I can’t function, I can’t feel the _magic_.”

“It’s just, Art.” Zatanna drew in a shaky breath, the only thing that stood between her and disintegrating into tears on the spot. When she released it, the tiny, defeated sound reverberated off the walls of the small room. “I’ve been speaking backwards since as long as I could speak at all. It’s like growing up bilingual, and suddenly all of that is slipping away? And that was something just between me and _Dad_. How do I live with that?” This time, she couldn’t help it; her voice broke as something inside her shattered. “How do I live with losing the only part of him I have left?”

For a moment, there was silence, and a small part of Zatanna shrunk even further in on herself, thinking Artemis had hung up. And then - “Don’t go anywhere.”

Zatanna sniffled. “What?”

“I’m coming over. I can be there in ten minutes, so you better not leave.”

“I - ok. But I’m not at my apartment.”

“Where are you?”   

“Remember that storage locker I showed you a while back, last November?”

“The one with all your research on Fate that you told us you gave up on?”

“The one and only.”

“Zee,” Artemis sighed, exasperated, but mostly just worried. “Just stay put, alright?”

“Okay.”

Zatanna stayed on the line long enough to hear Artemis getting out of bed, then hung up. She sat in the folding chair and stared at the wall of the storage locker, plastered with research and conspiracies that had amounted to nothing.

That was how Artemis found her when she rolled open the loud door to the locker; cold, alone, and at her breaking point.

“Get up, loser,” she said, tossing Zatanna a sweatshirt. In spite of herself, Zatanna smiled. This was the Artemis she knew and loved - the fiercely caring girl who cared for friends through aggressive affection and comfortable silences.

“Are we gonna beat some guys up?”

“Not tonight; definitely not the right medicine for this situation. You’re going to leave this place, give me the key, and then we’re going to get junk food and a watch movie.”

Zatanna raised an eyebrow. “Innovative. I like it.”

They made their way out the door. Artemis made sure that Zatanna was in front of her; she wouldn’t let her go anywhere else before she handed over the key to the storage locker and pocketed it herself. As the girls made their way wordlessly over to Artemis’ bike, Zatanna felt a wave of panic crash down on her.

_I thought I had this under control_ , she thought angrily, shoving her hands in the sweatshirt pocket, only to discover that there was a pack of tissues snuggly tuck in there.

Artemis didn’t say a word. She mounted the bike, waited for Zatanna to pull out a tissue, blow her nose, and put it back in her pocket. When she was ready she wrapped her arms around Artemis’ waist and they sped off.

They pulled up in front of the small convenience store a block away from Zatanna’s apartment - she went here often, and at odd hours of the night, for bandages or blue slushies or exactly twelve lighters, so the cashier didn’t even blink when the bell on the door rang.

Artemis went right for the small freezer in the back that whirred loudly with the effort of doing its job. “What flavor?” she asked, already holding a pint of Salted Caramel Core and a pint of Cherry Garcia.

“Chocolate Fudge Brownie,” said Zatanna, who had been eating the same thing since she was seven years old. Some things never change.

Artemis walked with purpose to the counter, easily beating Zatanna, who stood off to the side as she paid.

“Here, I’ll meet you at the apartment.” She handed Zatanna the cheap plastic bag. “I have to run another errand first.”

Zatanna made her way back to the apartment alone. The night was cold, but wrapped deep within Artemis’s oversized sweatshirt, she figured she’d seen colder nights, faced worse chills. This night was shaping up to be almost mediocre, and that she’d count as a win.

When she got to the twelfth floor apartment, Zatanna prepared for her guest. She pulled extra pillows and blankets out of a box from under her bed and started brewing a pot of coffee. She had to dig a little, but deep in the back of her closet she found a box full of her favorite movies she’d been able to keep when she was forced to move to the Cave. There were a few action movies, a few animated classics, and a few objectively bad movies that she’d kept around for purely sentimental reasons, but Zatanna knew exactly what she was looking for.

The room was just starting to smell like coffee when there was a knock at the door.

“It’s unlocked!” she shouted, getting out two mugs from the cabinet.

“We’re here,” Artemis said, and Zatanna turned around.

“We?”

The outline of a boy could be seen from behind Artemis, someone who was trying to hide but was too big to do a good job of it. Oh, of _course_ that’s what the other errand was. Zatanna didn’t know what else she’d expected.

Bart leaned to the left enough that half his face could be seen. “Hi,” he whispered.

Zatanna shakily set down the mugs and approached Bart very slowly. “Hey.”

She took another step forward and Bart averted his eyes. “I’m sorry for how I acted.”

“It’s ok,” said Bart, and he stepped out from behind Artemis, but couldn’t meet Zatanna’s gaze.

“No, no it’s not ok. I said very hurtful things because I was lashing out, and that’s not ok. I should have been more sensitive to your grief, instead of replacing it with my own problems. You might have been right, or you might have been wrong, but it shouldn’t have mattered either way. What matters is that we’re a _team_. We support each other, and we’re going to get through this together. Truce?” She extended her hand.

“Apology accepted,” Bart said, and shook her hand. His hands were calloused and his voice was deepening, but his behavior was that of someone much younger. Sometimes, Zatanna forgot just how young the Team was - they all did.

But tonight wasn’t for lingering on regrets and forgotten responsibilities. Zatanna had had enough hurt over the last twenty-four hours to last her all of November; she decided to herself it was going to end right then and there.

“Make yourselves comfortable!” Zatanna said, gesturing to the couch and the stack of blankets on the floor. “Ice cream and spoons are on the table next to the remote.”

She poured coffee for Artemis and herself while they settled in. She was pretty sure that Bart would have accepted coffee too, if offered, but enough Wally experience told her better than to give a speedster caffeine.

Zatanna put the disc in and settled on the left side of the couch next to Bart, who was sandwiched between her and Artemis. She kept as close to the arm rest as she could at first, just in case he was uncomfortable with physical contact. It didn’t last for long; the couch was small, and Bart leaned his shoulder against hers without pulling away, so Zatanna relaxed and pressed play.

_Perfect_.

“Um, Zee?” said Artemis through a mouthful of salted caramel ice cream. “Are you sure you have the right DVD?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Did they make a Jeopardy movie I didn’t know about?” Artemis asked, as the tv played the Jeopardy theme song and started to introduce the contestants.

“What’s Jeopardy?” Bart asked innocently, and both girls looked at him in horror.

“What’s _Jeopardy_!”

“Nevermind _what_ it is - why is it on the tv! Where’s my soft Disney movie, damnit.”

“I always knew you secretly enjoyed the Team’s Disney movie nights!” Zatanna said, and Artemis stuck her tongue out at her. In the background, Alex Trebek asked a contestant what the capital of Slovakia was.

“Bart,” she continued, turning to face him. “Jeopardy is a long running trivia show. My dad and I used to watch it, because it was on everywhere, all the time, and he liked to be better than the contestants. Every once and a while, he’d record episodes in bulk, so that if we ever found ourselves with nothing else to do, we’d at least have Jeopardy. It’s the game that never gets old.”

Bart nodded thoughtfully, swallowing a spoonful of Cherry Garcia. “Sounds fun.” After a pause, he added, “Your dad sounds like a smart guy.”

_'Sounds,’ present tense_ , Zatanna thought, and smiled into her ice cream. “He really is.”

“Alright,” Artemis interjected. “I admit Jeopardy is a quality show, but if we’re gonna play this, we’re doing it right. Let’s play all in!”

“Just shout out the answers if you think you know them,” Zatanna added for Bart’s sake.

Jeopardy, as it turns out, was timeless even to the time traveler. Bart had trouble with most of the categories, but was weirdly good at pop culture from the late 1900s. Artemis had a thing for history questions, and Zatanna - truly her father’s daughter - was a jack of all trades.

“What are the Appalachian Mountains?”

“Dude, it was Pizarro, duh!”

“This contestant is an idiot! It’s _clearly_ Virgo.”

And in that moment, it was just the three of them in the entire world, shouting at the tv at an ungodly hour of the morning and eating too much ice cream, like it was the old days again. Zatanna had lived in the apartment for two years, but that in that instant she felt like she’d just come home.

She wasn’t sure how much time had actually passed, but one moment they were playing Jeopardy in a dark room, and the next sunlight was peeking in from the small kitchen window and the tv was playing Disney’s _Hercules_. Bart snored softly from between the girls, head nestled on Artemis’s shoulder and arms around a pillow like it was a teddy bear. Zatanna suspected she would have been doing the same thing, were it not for the coffee.

Artemis looked fondly down at him, then back up at Zatanna. “This isn’t where I thought we’d end up.”

Zatanna snorted. “You can say that again.”

“This isn’t whe-”

Zatanna threw a pillow at her mid-sentence. “Shut up, dork. You know what I meant.”

Artemis held onto the pillow that was thrown at her and played with the tassels. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Though, weirdly enough, it feels like Halloween all over again.”

“What, like one of us very upset, motorcycle rides, and bittersweet endings?”

“I mean, I was thinking more along the lines of lowkey gay, but I accept your unnecessary poetry.”

Zatanna looked at Artemis, who was still fiddling with the pillow. For a moment her mind floundered uselessly to get a _grip_ on what had just been said. When it hit her - after an astounding five second delay - she giggled.

“Yeah, we were pretty gay, weren’t we?”

Artemis smiled softly at her. “The gayest.”

“It makes me wonder… what might have happened if I didn’t have all of that internalized biphobia?” Zatanna averted her gaze. Even now, having accepted her bisexuality years ago, admitting that outloud was difficult.

“Hey now.” Artemis reached over and let her hand rest on top of Zatanna’s. “What’s all this negativity, when we just had a disgustingly mushy heart-to-heart? We were both oblivious teenagers, Zee. I wouldn’t have known a crush if it punched me in the face.”

“At least that makes two of us,” Zatanna said, stifling a yawn.

Artemis laughed and pointed accusingly. “That’s enough deep conversation for one night. Morning? Whatever!” she shook her head and jokingly waggled her finger. “It’s well past your bedtime.”

“Yours too,” said Zatanna, but she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

“Og ot peels, or however you’d say it,” Artemis told her as the world started to fade away. The last thing Zatanna heard before she drifted off was Danny Devito singing “One Last Hope,” and honestly, that was a pretty solid conclusion to any night.

***

_She found herself in a meadow full of tiny yellow flowers. The sky above was robin’s egg blue and peppered with pink-tinged clouds. There was no sun here, but there was a certain warmth in the air. From the horizon line a spot drew nearer; as it got closer, she recognized it as a helmet. The Helmet of Fate. It radiated the energy of ancient power, but visually didn’t seem older than a day._

_“Why have you come here,” the helmet projected into her mind. It was less of a question than it was a command._

_“I came here?”_

_“You cannot be brought to this place; you must find it on your own.”_

_She didn’t know that, but it didn’t really matter; her words came intuitively. “This is another plane of existence.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Are there more?”_

_She knew it was a helmet and hardly could express nuanced emotion, but it sounded gruff. “It would be naive to assume that all planes of existence would stop at two.”_

_Suddenly, she wasn’t in the meadow anymore. She was in a city on Earth; she was swept up by a place of blue lightning; she was surrounded by mirrors and darkness; she in a realm of only super sized geometric building blocks. She entered hundreds, maybe thousands, of possible realities, and as quickly she’d come she was back in the meadow, as though she had never left at all._

_If a helmet could seem smug, this one was._

_“Point taken,” she said, head spinning. She switched gears. “But why have you left this plane for mine?”_

_“The world needs Doctor Fate,” the helmet told her, and she understood._

_“Not for long,” the girl said with a foreign boldness, and Zatanna woke up._

“Rise and shine, sleepy head,” Artemis said as Zatanna blinked the sleep out of her eyes. “I was going to make breakfast, but you’ve got no food, so I made a bagel run.”

“Got any coffee?” Zatanna yawned. Her head swam with visions of a meadow, and she almost didn’t catch the reply.

“Nope, not unless _you_ made any.”

“ _Nice_ , making the girl who just woke up make you coffee,” Zatanna grumbled, but she commanded, “Hserf top fo eeffoc!” and the coffee grounds levitated themselves, the water poured itself, and the machine came to life.

Artemis made eye contact with Zatanna, and the they exchanged a knowing look and a smile.

A muffled noise came from the couch.

“Bart’s up,” Artemis said, and walked over and grabbed the blanket off of him. “What did you say?”

“Noooo,” he whined, reaching in the air for the blanket back. “Too cold. Also, do I get coffee too?”

“Not a snowball’s chance in hell. I lived with Wally, remember? _You_ and caffeine? A thousand times worse.”

Bart snorted, and suddenly he was in the kitchen holding a steaming mug of coffee. Artemis shook her head at him and made a halfhearted grab for the mug, which he dodged easily, landing back on the couch in a fraction of a second.

“Zee, get that coffee away from him!” Artemis laughed. There was no response. “Zee?”   

She strolled over to the couch and waved her hand in front of Zatanna’s face, who appeared to have gone into shock. She was still feeling fuzzy and reeling from her dream, trying to pull herself back into this reality.

Artemis poked her. “You alright there?”

Zatanna blinked a few times, then with no warning shot up in a triumphant leap that almost knocked Artemis to the floor. “I got it!”

“You got it?”

Zatanna ignored her, pointing wildly Bart. The vague look she’d been wearing was nowhere to be found, replaced with the bold face of someone who knows something no one else does.

“Bart!” she laughed. “You make lightning when you run!”

Bart put down his coffee on the tiny table, which was a good idea considering how quickly his leg was bouncing. “Yeah, I guess I do?” His words were cautious but his eyes gave away his nervous excitement.

“And when we were at the North Pole! What did you see happening there?”

At this, Bart shot up too, facing Zatanna. “Blue sparks in the air. Blue lightning?”

“Yes!” Zatanna pumped her fist into the air. “The spell _did_ work, just not how we thought that it did. We didn’t find time travel because that was the wrong type of energy.”

“We found _speed_ ,” Bart breathed, looking at her in wonderment. “We found speed!”

“I saw it in my dream!” Zatanna said, so rapidly that a speedster would be envious. “Do you know about a plane of existence just for speed? I remember Wally telling us years ago something about how he got his powers, but it’s been too long.”

“It’s called the Speed Force,” Bart replied with equal velocity. “But we’d have to talk to Grandpa Barry for more.”

“We can do that too, but I have another suggestion.” She took a deep breath. “I want to stop by the Tower of Fate.”

From the kitchen came an obnoxious sipping noise. Artemis looked at them, slightly bewildered, from over the rim of her coffee cup.

“What?” said Zatanna.

“Nothing!” Artemis put her free hand up defensively. “I can tell you two are having some kind of a break through, but I expect to be filled in at some point. _Especially_ if we’re going to see Fate.”

“I’ve sort of been seeing the Helmet of Fate in my dreams,” Zatanna admitted. Artemis opened her mouth to interrupt, but she kept talking, not wanting to discuss her issues with Nabu during a cathartic moment. “I didn’t really know what was happening before, but I think I just figured it out. It’s complicated, but the short version is Bart was right. I think Wally _is_ alive, and he’s just not on Earth. He’s in another dimension.”

At this, Artemis also set down her coffee and put both her hands on the counter. “Wow. Okay. This is… wow.”

“Can we go now?” Bart said, nearly bouncing off the walls.

Zatanna walked over to Artemis and put her hand over one of Artemis’. She smiled gratefully and nodded, breathing out heavily. They stood there for a few seconds; Zatanna didn’t want to risk moving before seeing how she reacted.

After not much longer, Artemis spoke. “I don’t see why not. It seems like you have a lot of work to do. And a _lot_ of explaining,” she added, fixing Zatanna with a firm stare.

Zatanna smiled at the two of them, taking Artemis’ reaction as permission. “Let’s have a chat with Fate.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading! this was designed as a two part fic, and it might take me a while, but im making it part of a series to give the more plot-heavy part a chance to get the ending it deserves. 
> 
> in the meantime, i appreciate anyone who read so much - you're the best :p


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